SOCIAL NETWORKING, THINK LIKE A CANDIDATE

We are now in the immediate world where you can facebook, twitter or blog anything about your life and keep your friends and family up on what you’re doing. Along with this great way to communicate more than ever is the need to be conscience of your image. You might say “my facebook friends are the only ones who see my party pictures.” Not so, it is everyone in your friend’s network can see them too and it moves outward to people you may not be thinking about. In effect your social networking is a form of broadcasting and just like when you see a political candidate being careful of what they say because the wrong thing is guaranteed to be used against them in a story. On a smaller scale your social network entries can be telling a lot people about you and your image. Today you may be enjoying life and relaxing with friends but next year you may be running for office or looking to get that great job that is perfect for you. You want to make sure no one can go onto your social networking sites and see anything that would make them doubt you are the best person for the job. In the case of going the political route, it’s a certainty the other team is going to try to find anything they can use in their advertising to make voters think you may not be the best choice. Imagine having those St. Patrick’s Day photos come out with the neon hat and the beer bong. Guard what you put out there and craft your message. Use your social networking to get the word out about your community service, the wonderful new book you are writing or how you won that award at work. Want a good example of what happens when the wrong story gets out there, remember Michael Phelps, he has won more gold medals than any swimmer, broken world records and he lost a multimillion dollar sponsor because someone got inappropriate picture of him at a party. You are your own best advertising and you never know who is reading.